Helguera Palacio Boutique & Antique

The Helguera palace was built in the 17th century at the behest of the Count of Santa Ana de las Torres, and work on the manor house was completed in the 18th century. It was a manor of the Cantabrian nobility, and the specialist press links its history to the Ceballos family. Until a few years ago it was still a private residence that kept the typical features of the region's mountain manor houses: ashlar stone façades and an estate of meadows enclosed by low walls. Interior designer Malales Martínez Canut, founder of the Malmaca studio, acquired the palace in the early 2020s and turned it into an eleven-room hotel with an unusual idea: that it should also work as a living antiques shop, so guests could take home the chest of drawers or the china that had accompanied them during their stay. The idea quickly found an audience. In 2023 the hotel joined Relais & Châteaux, and in 2024, in the first edition of the Michelin Keys for Spain, it received one Key, the only one awarded to a hotel in Cantabria. The rooms are named after historical figures; the Conde de las Torres room occupies the original ground-floor bedroom and, according to the hotel itself, is dedicated to the man who conceived the house as a retreat but never got to enjoy it.

La Helguera follows the model of the Cantabrian mountain manor house of the 17th and 18th centuries: ashlar stone volumes, exposed wooden beams and high-ceilinged rooms opening onto the gardens. The restoration respected that legacy and focused on the interior, designed by Malales Martínez Canut (Malmaca) together with Maria Mas Interiors. Each room is a small stage set: the Duque de Wellington suite, a former stable of about 50 square meters, is dressed in English cretonnes in blues and greys, with a fireplace and large windows; the Condesa de la Camorra mixes chinoiserie wall fabrics, a late 18th-century Provençal wardrobe and replicas of the Titanic's washbasins; the Conde de las Torres keeps its ashlar walls and an early 18th-century William & Mary cabinet. Beds have handmade Vispring mattresses and bathrooms feature tubs set between the palace's original beams. Outside the palace, a stone house holds the wellness area, with a fireplace, a decked hot tub and valley views, and a pool designed for use in summer and winter.

Las Presillas is a small village in the municipality of Puente Viesgo, in the Pas valley, halfway between Torrelavega and the entrance to the Pasiego Valleys, and just over twenty kilometers as the crow flies from Santander. A few minutes' drive away is Puente Viesgo, with its church of San Miguel and, above all, Monte Castillo, home to the caves of El Castillo and Las Monedas, part of the Paleolithic cave art of northern Spain declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. El Castillo holds some of the oldest known paintings in Europe, with red discs dated to more than 40,000 years ago. Further up the valley the Pasiego Valleys begin: meadows enclosed by stone walls, Pasiego cabins scattered across the slopes, beech and oak forests, and routes for walking or cycling. This is the land of quesucos, sobaos and quesadas, and the coast of Santander and the Cantabrian beaches are less than an hour away.